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Dessert

Swiss Cream

A chilled dessert of sponge cake topped with a sweetened cream and sherry sauce, finished with pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the sponge cake into 1‑inch thick slices and place them in a deep glass dish.

  2. Pour the sherry over the cake slices.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with the thinly cut lemon rind and sugar until flavored.

  3. Remove the lemon rind, then add the cornflour mixture and boil for 2–3 minutes until thickened.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Whip the cream slightly, then add it and the lemon juice to the cooled mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the sponge cake.

  2. Sprinkle with pistachios and serve when perfectly cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the cream a smooth, set body.
Cream
Adds richness and a light texture when whipped slightly and folded into the cooled mixture.
Sponge cake
Forms the base layer that soaks up the sherry and holds the custard.
Sherry
Soaks into the sponge cake, adding moisture and a sweet, aromatic flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the cornflour thickens.

The step that matters

Thickening the cornflour mixture. Cornflour must boil for a few minutes to fully swell and thicken; undercooked starch leaves the custard thin and gritty-tasting. The mixture must also cool before the cream is added, or the cream may thin or split.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, sherry, sugar, pistachio):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sherry, sugar, pistachio. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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